Animal Sciences Commons^™

Brood Provisioning And Nest Survival Of Ardea Herodias (Great Blue Heron) In Maine, Margaret M. Meserve Auclair, Kathryn A. Ono, Noah G. Perlut

Marine Sciences Student Publications

From 1983–2009, the number of coastal breeding pairs of Ardea herodias (Great Blue Heron [GBHE]) in Maine declined by 64%, and the number of occupied islands on which these birds bred declined by 40%. The Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife listed the GBHE as a species of special concern in 2007, and expanded its annual monitoring to include inland colonies in 2009. To assess regional demographic differences, we compared the relationship between brood provisioning and nest survival of GBHEs in 1 coastal and 1 inland colony. In terms of brood-provisioning within the 2 colonies, the inland colony had …